EMOTIONS

Song:

           

            Happiness is five different crayons,

               knowing a secret, climbing a tree.

            Happiness is learning to whistle,

               catching a firefly, setting him free.

            Happiness is being alone every now and then.

            And happiness is coming home again.

We are all feelers  all the time.  With every breath we take, with very move we make, with every word we say …  every action, reaction,  decision is stimulated by an emotion.

We are great feelers every minute of the day. We are feelers through our talking but also in our silence. We are feelers when we are awake  and also  during our sleep.  

Emotions are what we are. We are basically what we feel.

Some emotions can be very visible while others would be very hidden,  sneaking in our body and mind, lurking in the deepest recesses of our mind and soul.   The raw emotions we see can be a manifestation of a primordial emotion and in that case, the raw emotion becomes the visible one while the primordial emotion becomes the hidden one. 

Many emotions can be very visible in their manifestations although their  being evident is also affected by their intensity and the capacity of the person to feel and show what he/she feels.  When we are happy, we smile, shout, jump, laugh, and even cry.  When we are sad, we shed tears, cry, sulk, etc.

Some emotions that we see would be outward visible signs of primitive emotions that are hidden. How many times have you seen your child suffering from stomach pain, and therefore, crying and wriggling in pain, not because of his chocolate or cereal bar, but because of fear and resistance?  Maybe you have experienced the same when it was your first day in school or when you dreaded going to school as a young boy/girl and yet you had to for fear of your parent’s anger.

How many times that  out of fear,  you wanted to shout but you couldn’t  for one reason or another?  And how many times in the past when you were very excited and yet you could not just act it out because the circumstances did not warrant it?

What about loss of appetite? It can be a manifestation of either or a constellation of the following emotions:   sadness, anger, fear, depression, etc.

Emotions regulate our lives.  Emotions are universal, hence, there is  no need for a dictionary or  translators and experts to understand the language of emotions. We just need to  listen to our inner selves  and listen to others.  We need to allow ourselves to feel and not think. We just need to open our heart to them, refrain from judging,  and we will understand the emotion/s behind every step and action of others and our own.

Emotions can be also reflected through a walk, a dance,  voice tone, etc.

Emotions can be depicted through a painting, music, or any work of ART.  Studies have showed that excellent  artists paint, dance, compose a melody,  or create a sculpture, etc. out of a deep pain, or to have a venue to express their emotional state.   

We can’t live without emotions and believe it or not, people who appear unemotional are the  most fragile and vulnerable. They are the people who are too  afraid to get so overwhelmed with emotions that they decided long time ago to shut out what they feel,  build a fence to  protect themselves from the intensity of emotions and feelings, that through their own folly they believe can truly harm them.

But believe me, people who do not feel at all are those ones who are very dangerous. 

Hence, let us not deprive ourselves of feeling what we feel, as emotions are a gift, an endowment, a faculty that allows us to regulate our health, our life.

SONG:

For happiness is anyone and anything at all,

   that’s loved by you.

The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa woke up one day to find himself inexplicably transformed into a giant bug.  Prior to this dreaded day, Gregor was a traveling salesman who hated his job.  He was the sole breadwinner in the family that was composed of a slouching, defeated father, a physically and constitutionally weak mother, and an adoring and devoted younger sister.  His transformation into a giant insect left the totally economically dependent family in disarray.

After the transformation, his younger sister took on the sole responsibility for his care.  His father, a loser, whose business failure sapped his vitality,  despised Gregor and his current condition as he was no longer of utility to the family. His mother, although she loved him, could not bear the sight of her son in bug form, as its effect on her health was  terrible.

To survive,  his  family had to find work. His father found a work in bank and this helped him restore his faith and confidence in himself. His sister found a work in a store, while his mother was sewing piecework and doing the chores, as the servant had been let go.

One night, when his asthmatic mother accidentally caught sight of him crawling on the wall, she collapsed in shock.  This triggered his father’s wrath and at last, he began to pelt Gregor with apples. One penetrated Gregor’s back, producing excruciating pain that weakened him and eventually reduced him to invalidity. No one had the nerve to remove the apple from his back, but consequentially, he was no longer treated as an enemy.

Time passed by with each one attending to his/her duties, hence,  no one had much time or energy to worry about Gregor.  The family gave up hope that Gregor would  “come back” to them. Consigned to oblivion, unwanted, covered in dust, and now barely able to move,  Gregor, not wanting to cause anymore burden to the family,  willed himself to die.

End of the story

Gregor Samsa was a character created by Franz Kafka, a Czech existential writer who lived in the first quarter of the 20^th century,   in a novel “ The Metamorphosis”.

There have been countless attempts at interpreting this allegorical novel. I would venture putting my own before you now.

Gregor’s transformation into a bug can be seen both as a blessing or a curse to the family, depending on the reader’s perspective.  His transformation and eventual death triggered the transformation of his family and paved the way for the onset of a new phase of life in them.  With his death, “the great burden” that held the family hostage for sometime was finally lifted. With his death, the  liberation of their spirits occurred,  self-respect truly bloomed, and the future became  a bearable thought. Transformation is a reality in our daily life and they come in all sizes and packages.  Generally, change can give us an unsettling feeling thereby making us initially reactive to it. But if it is viewed as a  chance  to go through another phase of life, then we would probably welcome it with open arms. But of course taking that perspective never comes that easy, but with practice, we can become better.

“What the caterpillar calls an end, the butterfly calls a beginning”. “Death” is a chance to move to a higher state of existence, and it does not matter whether you are a leper leaving a cord or coat or a scourge when you die, or a  leopard leaving the same or becoming a goat upon its  death, or a man leaving his name when he dies. One thing I believe is certain though, that the “death” of something, is the beginning of another thing in a higher plane of being and existence.

As people of  this contemporary time, we are faced with a bigger challenge to continuously transform ourselves into fully-functioning individuals, otherwise,  we would be considered a misfit, maladujsted, and may be rendered obsolete after some time.  Upon accomplishment of one goal, we move forward to attaining another and the cycle goes on. Life takes  on a spiral cycle continuously  until the end of our earthly existence. In our life, we are called and challenged to metamorphose.  It is up to us to respond when but if I may say so, I would say ‘The time is now”.

Let  us all embrace metamorphosis in our lives!!!

Lies make the world go round.

Lies make the world go round. Lying is NOT BAD! But before you discontinue reading this blog and hit the X button on the top left corner of the screen. Give yourself 2 more minutes and perhaps after that you might just be proud to call yourself a BIG LIAR.

Lies make the world go round and in fact it can be good for you and me! Lie is a type of deception in the form of untruthful statement with the intention to deceive, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, or to avoid punishment. (Wikipedia)

A lie is a lie is a lie. Right? Yes and No. This passé is not new to you, good lies and bad lies. White lies and Black lies. I will not talk about the lies that hurt and destroy relationships and lives – which we call black lies. But statements which spice up our daily bread and butter called white lies. They spice our lives and make the world go round!

A white lie is not supposed to hurt someone, it is supposed to protect him or her. In even a more personal scale, lying is a way of protecting ourselves. A person who claims that he speaks the truth all the time without fail – is a BIG LIAR! We lie to our boss, our friends, spouses, and children and even to ourselves. And most of the time we are not aware of it! Let me explain and cite examples:

Are any of these statements familiar to you?
• I will call you back. (even if you don’t have the intension of calling)
• I’m really glad to see you. (when you are really not, or it doesn’t matter)
• Which email? Which sms?
• Let’s get together some time. (Another way of saying, Goodbye with style)
• The traffic is extremely terrible today. (when you are late for an appointment)
• I’m great. (but your facial expression Darth Vader)
• How are you today? (even if you really don’t want to know)
• I’m in a meeting right now (when you want to avoid somebody)
• Nothing (when in fact, it is everything!)

Sounds familiar?

These are just words… what makes us untruthful person and separates us from being deceitful are our actions!

I want to be truthful to you in telling you that I AM A LIAR. And more often than not, I use these words everyday, not to hurt people, not to protect others and myself. It makes us feel good when somebody tells us the following (even we know they don’t mean it)

• You are the best in the business
• The food is great
• Your new hairstyle fits you
• You don’t look like your age
• Have you lost weight?
• You are a lucky man / woman
• Your children are really, really smart and cute.


When we hear these little lies, we also lie to ourselves by believing them. We feel nice and if we choose to believe them our spirits are lifted. Though we know that we really haven’t lost weight or our kids are not that smart but we like to listen and believe them. Any harm done? No, in fact it does more good than harm. And in turn, we tend to be nice and say the same little lies to the other person. It keeps marriages and relationships intact.

What if we are not capable of lying?
• When a husband says, I love you even if you are no longer beautiful.
• I think your nose it too big for your face.
• I don’t want to talk to you because I’m busy with something else.
• It’s none of your business (when somebody asks, How are you?)
• I think you gained twice as much since you started going to the gym!

It would destroy relationships, marriages and friendships. And in a much larger scale hurt the society. Imagine if politicians, agencies and governments will bluntly slap the truths in our faces…. It would be a disaster!

These little words, lies, or little chilly spices that we exchange everyday, helps us cope with the challenges and difficulties of everyday life. It wouldn’t be so bad to hear a little bit of lie, would it?

In the morning when I wake up, the very first thing I do is LIE to myself. And what the heck, it does perk me up! I affirm to myself each day that I am beautiful, amazing, happy and successful. And I just go about lying to everyone.

I AM A PROUD LIAR – I help make the world go round.

Are you a Liar?

The Psychology of Fear

My Own Fears

They say that ‘Of all the liars in the world, the worst are our own fears.’  While ‘worry’, as the next of kin of ‘fear” is the most destructive habit, ‘fear” is the greatest problem to overcome. Why? Because it is the same fear, the same crippling fear that feeds in itself that would make one  afraid to confront and overcome it.

I have fears of my own that I would like to tell you about. Do you have fears too?

Now let me tell you about my own fear.

Facilitating Anxiety

I am basically the nervous type of guy. But I would call it Facilitating Anxiety.  When there is something I need to do or when I have a responsibility to fulfill that would bring me out of my comfort zone, I tend to get anxious about it. As a result, I prepare ahead of time to manage the anxiety. I do not want to prolong the agony as it can sap my physical and emotional energy. To obviate that, I complete the task much ahead of time, and there goes the worry.

Debilitating Anxiety or Neurotic Fear

There is another type of Fear, which is Neurotic Fear. Some of its most concrete manifestations would relate to the person’s ‘fear of failing’.  A person who has been accustomed to succeeding can be a good candidate for this. It is the perfectionist orientation and self-serving pride that would make a person too focused on preserving his/her immaculate record and not staining his or her reputation with a single failure. This can be true of people whose self-worth is too dependent on what they achieve.

           

I also have this debilitating anxiety to some extent. But don’t get me wrong. It is not that I do not try. I would take the challenge more often than not, but my fear of failing, my fear of not doing it perfectly salvages my effort and chance to give my best shot and produce the best outcome I am capable of producing. Subsequently, I do  not try and risk as much as I believe I should. Somehow, I am not a good psychologist to myself. I need to remind myself of this precious lesson from the movie “The Running”, which suggests that ‘the object of the race is not winning the race but finishing it’. I need to constantly remind myself that it is not about ‘winning all the time’ that matters in  life.

Fear of failure

Who among of you are not afraid to fail? Who among of you never failed? Because failure is a dismal reality in life (well depending on how we see it anyway), fear of failure becomes commonplace. Human as we are, we may have  failed so many times that we would not remember all of them. We fell the first time we tried to walk, right? We nearly drowned the first time we tried to swim, didn’t we? How many of you play baseball or softball? Did we hit the ball the first time we swung a bat? Speaking of baseball, they say that the heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.

Failure as an Opportunity to Shine

There are many exemplary Men & Women who turned the “fear of failure” into “courage in the midst of failure”. I would like to mention some of them here.

o                                Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but also hit 714 home runs.

• Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston  Seagull  before Macmillan finally published it in 1970 and by 1975 it had sold more than 7 million copies in the US alone.
• Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
• It took more than 100 times for Thomas Alva Edison to come up with a perfect bulb.
• Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections, twice failed in business, and suffered a nervous breakdown before he became one of the greatest presidents of America.

What made these men prevail? It is their perspective that is positive

Hence, every time I am faced with a challenge that  I feel like turning my back from, I would recall in my mind the words of wisdom from some great people to give me courage.

·         Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes of our goal. -  Henry Ford

·         I did not fail 100 plus times but I discovered 100+ ways of not making the perfect bulb. -  Edison

·         The path was worn and slippery. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other out of the way, but I recovered and said to myself, “It’s a slip not a fall.”-  Abe Lincoln

Hence, the next time I take the challenge before me and it did not turn out as I expected it to be, I just have to remind myself that “It was a slip, not a fall.” And next time you guys find yourself in the same predicament,  you just have to say to yourself “It is a slip, not a fall”. And next time I am tempted to turn my back from opportunities because of ‘fear to fail’,  I have to remind myself that my fear is blinding my eyes to see the reality, and that I have to confront it head on, because “Of all the liars in the world, the worst are our own fears.”